News

Working on the new website, we've enjoyed reminding ourselves of the invariably stimulating books we've published and the vast number of Salon articles. Much has changed since www.lindaleith.com came into existence in March, 2011, and we're planning a growing role for Salon .ll. This website is not only a promotional tool; it's at the centre of what we do.

You'll find news below of our books, honours, events, reviews, Salon posts -- French and English -- and everything else we thought you might be interested in, including -- you'll need to scroll down the page for this -- a sneak preview of what's coming up over the months to come.

Phillip Ernest is a Canadian writer with an extraordinary personal history, as even the briefest version of his bio suggests: "Born in 1970, Phillip Ernest grew up in New Liskeard, Ontario. Fleeing home at fifteen, he lived on Toronto’s skid row until he was twenty-eight. He learned Sanskrit from the book Teach Yourself Sanskrit, and later earned a BA in South Asian Studies from the University of Toronto and a PhD in Sanskrit from Cambridge."

You can read the first part of Linda Leith's Q & A with Phillip Ernest here and Part II here.

Inspector Luc Vanier's Montreal on All Lit Up

February 6, 2018Peter Kirby's Inspector Luc Vanier's novels are Montreal novels, revealing the gritty underside of Sin City first in The Dead of Winter -- now an audiobook -- and then in Vigilante Season and the Arthur Ellis Best Novel award-winning Open Season. Thanks to All Lit Up for the feature on Luc Vanier's Montreal!

Breaking news from LLP-LLÉ! Two translations from the Portuguese!

January 29, 2018Two novels by the distinguished Portuguese author Cristina Carvalho will be published worldwide by Linda Leith Publishing - Linda Leith Éditions in Spring 2018: Rebellion, an English translation by Alexandra Andresen Leitão of Rebeldia, and Modigliani, un roman, the French translation by Sophie Enderlin of the award-winning O Olhar et a Alma - Romance de Modigliani. [Photo: José Lorvão]

Here's the book trailer for The Apocalypse of Morgan Turner!

January 14, 2018.Jennifer Quist's new novel is a courtroom drama entitled The Apocalypse of Morgan Turner.Morgan Turner’s grief over her sister’s brutal murder has become a rut, an everyday horror she is caught in along with her estranged parents and chilly older brother. In search of a way out, she delves the depths of a factory abattoir, classic horror cinema -- and the Canadian criminal justice system.You can link to the book trailer here.

Here's the book trailer for Leila Marshy's novel The Philistine!

January 4, 2018Dying to find out about Leila Marshy's first novel, The Philistine, which will be published March 9, 2018? Check out the book trailer here!

Tea and Portuguese books on a wintry January afternoon

January 3, 2018Linda Leith (right) shares a pot of tea and discusses some recent Portuguese fiction with Luisa Pinto Teixeira and Ingrid Bejerman on a wintry January afternoon in Montreal. [Photo: Ingrid Bejerman]

Aislin at 50: The finale

January 02, 2018Terry Mosher has been publishing Aislin cartoons in The Gazettefor over 50 years, and in almost as many books (three of which are published by LLP). He'll now be reducing his output to just one cartoon a week. To honour the end the year-long series Aislin at 50, Terry lists dozens of the people he has worked with and laughed with over the course of his brilliant career. (The image of a ring that was given to him by his wife Mary represents the number of Gazette editors he has outlasted.)

Jennifer Quist stories available through Edmonton Airport dispenser!

December 27, 2017French creator Short Edition, with many Distributeurs d’histoires courtes in Europe, is expanding into North America. “We’re the first one in Canada," says Edmonton organizer Jason Lee Norman. Jennifer Quist The Apocalypse of Morgan Turner (LLP, March 2018), is one of almost 100 authors with works loaded in the unit. Story by Scott Hayes, St. Albert

A Nobel Prize for Xue Yiwei? Now that's what we call a blog post...

December 26, 2017"Mr. Xue, and even President Xi are all Dr. Bethune’s children, and by inference also Mao’s children. Nobel Prize for Literature has been very much a political game. I think only about 10% of the winners in last 60 years since WW2 are worthy the prize, certainly not the Chinese winners. After reading only one book by Xue Yiwei, I think he may truly deserve one." -- N. M. Cheung, posting on Hidden Harmonies, 21 November 2017.

Dr. Bethune's Children on The Gazette's 2017 best books list

December 23, 2017Yet another accolade for Dr. Bethune's Children by Xue Yiwei, which makes The Gazette's 2017 best books list!

New on Salon ll : Merry Effing Christmas, by Jonah Campbell

December 22, 2017"Merry Effing Christmas, or, Giving Rum Another Chance, or, Rum Gives Me Another Chance," is an excerpt from Jonah Campbell's book Eaten Back to Life, published on Salon .ll.just in time for Christmas, by kind permission of Invisible Publishing. Find out more about the book -- and buy yourself a copy -- on the publisher's website here.

Q&Q's best of 2017 list now online

December 11, 2017Quill & Quire's 2017 Books of the Year is now online, very much including Ariela Freedman's wonderful novel Arabic for Beginners: "In Arabic for Beginners – her affecting, polished, and deeply confident debut novel – Ariela Freedman presents the Middle East conflict as we’ve rarely seen it, through the eyes of an ambivalent wife and mother. Freedman’s prose is so fluid and flawless that I felt I could trust her, paragraph after paragraph, to take me wherever she wanted to go." –Mark Sampson

Leigh Kinch-Pedrosa joins Salon .ll.

December 8, 2017Salon .ll. is delighted to welcome Leigh Kinch-Pedrosa as Contributing Editor. The general manager of Confabulation Montreal, an organization dedicated to the growth of the storytelling community in Canada, Leigh is the founder of The Confab Story Lab and has produced live events for CBC Books All Told and Off-JFL. She has told stories for Tales from the Black, Yarn, Vanier College, Confabulation, and Phi Centre’s ongoing exhibit Lucid Realities.

Translating Arabic in Montreal

December 7, 2017, 1:15 p.m.Linda Leith participates in a panel discussion on "Publishing Literature in Translation in Montreal" hosted by Benoît Léger, with author, anthropologist and L'Espace de la diversité president Yara El-Ghadban, as part of a colloquium on Translating Arabic in Montreal. McConnell Building LB-619, 1400 de Maisonneuve W. For information: figura@concordia.ca. Free.

Xue Yiwei and the December 6th memorial

December 6, 2017"Decrying the senselessness of violence. Novelist draws parallels between Polytechnique, Tiananmen massacres." Gazette feature on Dr. Bethune's Children author Xue Yiwei by Marian Scott on the anniversary of the Polytechnique massacre of December 6, 1989. [Photo: The Gazette]

The Governor General's Literary Awards

November 30, 2017 The Governor General's Literary Awards ceremony at Rideau Hall is a smashing party and an opportunity to catch up with old friends. Pictured are Sophie Cazenave, once communications director at Blue Metropolis and now literary webmaster at Radio-Canada; Managing Director of CBC Quebec Meredith Dellandrea (left), Linda Leith, and QWF President Linda M. Morra, who took the photo (right).

Great new idea from QuébecReads

November 27, 2017 At the end of every year, The Guardian newspaper asks a range of publishers to pick their hits and misses. This year, Peter McCambridge at QuébecReads has started a new tradition of our own and asked a handful of Canadian publishers -- LLP included -- to look back at 2017, with the focus on Quebec fiction.

Dr. Bethune's Children on The Globe and Mail's Best 100 of 2017

November 25, 2017 Dr. Bethune's Childrenis on The Globe and Mail's 100 Best Books of 2017 where, in this golden age of literary translation in Canada, this extraordinary novel is the only Canadian fiction in translation on the list. And it's a translation from Chinese, which is why it isn't even eligible for most of Canada's literary prizes. Congratulations to author Xue Yiwei and to translator Darryl Sterk!

The QWF Awards

November 21, 2017, 7 p.m. The Quebec Writers' Federation Gala at the Lion d'Or: 1676 Ontario Street E., Montreal. This is always a great party. Tickets info at www.qwf.org. Ariela Freedman, who is shortlisted for the Concordia QWF First Book Prize for her delightfully accomplished first novel, Arabic for Beginners. Cheering for you, Ariela!

Xue Yiwei in The New York Times

November 17, 2017 LLP author Xue Yiwei, author of Dr. Bethune's Children, is featured in today's New York Times. The article is by award-winning Montreal writer Taras Grescoe, who interviewed Xue Yiwei on stage at the Blue Metropolis festival in April 2017. [Photo: The New York Times]

Peter Kirby at the Salon du livre de Montréal

November 16, 6 p.m., November 18th, 2 p.m. LLP|LLÉ Award-winning crime writer Peter Kirby, whose first novel, The Dead of Winter, has just appeared in Rachel Martinez's French translation, will be signing copies of Vague d'effroi,at Stand 216, Place Bonaventure, Montreal. [Photo: Linda Leith]

Ariela Freedman's Arabic for Beginners makes Q&Q's best of 2017 list

November 14, 2017 The December issue of Quill & Quire has just arrived, and Ariela Freedman's novel is one of the books named as the Best of 2017! Congratulations, Ariela!

Dr. Bethune's Children "a wonderful novel"

November 8, 2017, 7 p.m. From Richard King, via Twitter: "As I reported on @cbcHomerun Dr. Bethune's Children by Xue Yiwei is a wonderful novel bringing together great Chinese characters & and a narrator living in Montreal @LL publishing. [Photo of Yiwei with the statue of Norman Bethune in Montreal: Stephane Lavoie]

mRb cover story on Dr. B.

November 3, 2017 The 20th anniversay issue of Montreal Review of Books arrived with today's copy of The Globe and Mail, with Xue Yiwei on the front cover and a great story about his first novel in English, Dr. Bethune's Children, by Anita Anand. The issue launches Monday, Nov 7, 7 p.m. at La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, 176 Bernard Ouest.

George Fetherling noir!

November 1, 2017 The November Quill & Quire features a review of George Fetherling's noir novel The Carpenter of Montrealalongside one of the collection Montreal Noir -- which includes Peter Kirby.

Great Q&A with George Fetherling

Auf Wiedersehen

October 15, 2017Spreading our wings! Linda Leith Publishing | Linda Leith Éditions participates in the stupendous 2017 Frankfurt Book Fair for the first time, but not for the last time as Canadian participation grows in advance of October, 2020, when Canada will be featured country. Thank you to Livres Canada Books for its support. Auf Wiedersehen, indeed.

Reading Mavis Gallant's What Is To Be Done?

September 6, 2017Actors Howard Rosenstein, Susan Glover, Eleanor Noble (pictured, left to right), Dean Patrick Fleming, and Gabielle Soskin did a brilliant informal reading of Mavis Gallant's play What Is To Be Done? Thank you to them all and to Pat Donnelly for bringing them together.

Watch this space

Vampire fiction! Phillip Ernest's The Vetala

Nada Marjanovic, professor of Sanskrit, has spent more than twenty years translating an obscure text on the vetala, a parasitic, vampire-like being that possesses the bodies of his victims. When her mentor in Pune dies, she finds herself face-to-face with the undead that the text describes. The Vetala will be published in March.

Abla Farhoud's Hutchison Street

A moving account of isolated individuals attempting to reach out to one another in one of Montreal’s most diverse neighbourhoods. Hasidic Montreal as seen through the eyes of an award-winning Quebec writer and playwright of Lebanese descent. Abla Farhoud's first novel in English, Hutchison Street, has been translated by Judith Weisz Woodsworth. March.

Leila Marshy's first novel

Montreal writer and editor Leila Marshy is of Palestinian-Newfoundland heritage—she can tell a good joke, but it bombs. And she's just put the finishing touches to her first novel. The Philistine finds Nadia in Cairo, rediscovering her roots, her language, her ambitions, and the unavoidable destiny of becoming a Philistine – the Arabic word for Palestinian. March.

The Dead of Winter audiobook

Peter KIrby's bestselling first crime novel is on its way as an audiobook! Read by Montreal actor Howard Rosenstein, The Dead of Winterwas always a compelling read in English. It's now available in French, as well, as Vague d'effroi (LLP 2017; trans. Rachel Martinez). And you'll be able to sit back and listen to Inspector Luc Vanier's first gripping case very soon. In the dead of winter, no less.